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Health news

19/01/2005 Bed ¹ six

Is our free medicine, being scanty financed, capable of rendering effective medical aid? The headmaster of the Republican center of human being reproduction and family planning Doctor of Medical Science Andrei Akopyan will try to explain some things.

- Why people should beg for the free medical aid?

- I believe that a patient who pays for examining and treatment is more interesting to our medical institutions. All the rest are burden.

- I just can’t recollect the fact that in state medical institutions of England and USA people are taken money…

- They aren’t. It happened in our country because neither of reforms, promised beginning with the year 1996, was accomplished; some of them didn’t occur at all.

- But it seems to me that the financing has been reestablished?

- Yes, in general. But it can only support the surviving of the institutions, not the development. It should be increased in 3 – 4 times more. That’s how it happens that we excel almost everybody at quantity of state medical institutions: our bed fund exceeds the index of all highly developed countries. At that, 24 % of means that needs public health service are personal means of the citizens. And almost all of them are spent on payments of services in state medical institutions.

- Well, to a direct question: Will our state medical institutions be property?- the head chiefs of public health service with one accord answer “No”, explaining that they are talking only about the changes in the mechanism of management.

- Such change is impossible, if the market mechanisms are being substituted by managerial methods. If the government wants to render chargeable medical services, it has to keep the rules, which has been determined by the government itself. The increase of chargeable medical services caused the disunity of the system on two parts: chargeable, elite and undoubtedly lagging free medicine, the modernization of which is doubted also.

- It is almost impossible to get free high qualified medical aid…It’s an exclusive circle…

We must create a legal market of rent of medical institutions for the private system. But it’s necessarily important to save the state medical system, where the medical aid to citizens is fully financed, as it should be.

Irina Krasnopolskaya

Full text is available only in the Russian version.

19/01/2005 April will begin in March

The president commissioned the government to increase pensions ahead of schedule and introduce into practice unified privilege tickets for privileged people.

On Monday during the meeting with the cabinet of Ministers the president of Russia Vladimir Putin told that the change of privileges for money is valid but it hasn’t been introduced into practice in full measure. That’s why the management of the country declared about speeded up increase of pensions beginning not with the 1st of April but with the 1st of March, besides the addition to the sum will rise.

- I believe it would be right to increase pensions on at least 200 rubles beginning with the 1st of March, - the president prompted to the government.

- It’s possible to assume that in the connection with the planning indexing the addition to the pensions will reach 240 rubles, - reacted the Minister of Health and Social Development Mikhail Zurabov.
Speaking about the government, which is being criticized, it must have been ready for the telling criticism of left-wing and right-wing parties, “which on in the beginning of nineties were making the oligarchial system of capitalism and on the other hand made popular but absolutely undoable decisions” mentioned the president. As the result, Putin states, “more than 50 % of citizens were ascribed as privileged ones and the rest of the people had to repay all the services”. After such an explanation the reasons for passing the law should be understandable to everybody. “The problem is the realization of it. Both the government and the regional administration didn’t accomplish the aim – not to worsen the situation of those, who really need help”, mentioned the president.

Putin believes it is right to let the citizens decide whether to get the privilege tickets or to get pure money.

“The problem of passage of citizens who have been assigned to the federal list should be solved by the government and thus compensate the regions the corresponding loses”, such advice gave Vladimir Putin to the cabinet of Ministers, emphasizing that all pensioners also use the free passage, even having no privileges.

More than that the cabinet of Ministers lent an ear to the numerous requests of the veterans and is ready to provide them for free traveling to any region in the country once a year. “They don’t want to go to signatories even for free, they just want to visit their relatives”, explained the gist of their claims Mikhail Zurabov.

Elena Lashkina

Full text is available only in the Russian version.

18/01/2005 Baby-boom or a child for one’s old age

Talks about the demography situation in Russia increase. The death rate is extremely high, particularly speaking about men in able-bodied age.

70-ruble monthly grant doesn’t let one to support a child well. The problem remains unsolved even by means of extraordinary grant-in-birth (it reaches 6 thousand rubles beginning with 2005 year). But already substantial rise of those grants leads to rise in birth, unfortunately in those families, where a child is the source of incomes. In the majority of cases the destiny of such children results in failure.
Material and prohibitive stimuli in connection of birth rate rise work out only in totalitarian kinds of society.

Our society, disappointed by the perspectives of state pension ensuring, begins to realize that the most reliable way of being supported in one’s old age is a child or even several children. To provide themselves in their old age parents, first of all, have to take care about their children’s health, in the second place to give proper education, and thirdly, to bring up a child in the course of family spiritual values. It will really cost a penny. At that men get an additional stimulus to earn more money and get higher qualification. For a woman upbringing of several children means concentration on the family life, which helps to avoid child neglect and trouble.
In this scheme grown-up children of course separate themselves from their parents, but the finance connections remain. And it doesn’t obligatory mean only money. There is a possibility to create such pension schemes, where the well-paid 30 – 40-year generation will open accounts for their parents. May be this very thing will become the perfect model of pension system? Besides, there will be a radical turn in our mirthless demography perspectives.

Eugeniy Gontmakher

Full text is available only in the Russian version.

18/01/2005 How it will sound in Latin?

There are still a lot of questions concerning the ensuring of the veterans by medicines. It troubles not the patients, but… the specialists of the system of public health service.

The doctors and pharmaceutists learn how to fill in the prescriptions. There is a huge quantity of codes and figures in the new blanks. If there is at least one mistake – the drug-store won’t give the medicine.

- They even have to remember the Latin names of the drugs, - the chief of the department of Health Vasiliy Prishvin complains.

There are a lot of queues in the out patients’ clinics, but this phenomenon is temporary, according to the manager of the region medicine. The doctors have taken special courses and there were published special outlets to avoid wrong completions of the prescriptions.

17/01/2005 In some regions even on the sixteenth day of the reform it is impossible for people to understand who is responsible for this and that

Yesterday in Saint-Petersburg people made a traffic jam on Nevsky Broad Street. And this happens not for the first time: people can’t understand regional administration and get an understandable answer to the question: “Where is the money, which was promised for privileges?”

An interview with the vice-prime Alexander Zhukov

- What do you think, if it is the law that appeared to be so imperfect than it has been supposed to, or if it is the executives that failed?

- I believe, that the law is absolutely reasonable. It is for the first time, when the full list of people, who have privileges, has been made. It includes 14,5 million people.

- Do you mean the list of names?

- Yes, the list of names of all privilege “possessors”.

- Do you mean to say that all these people have already got their money?

- All of them will get it till the 20th of January. Besides the most necessary services will remain free for all of them.

- Speaking about federal privilege “possessors”, if there are any problems, they can be easily solved, but what about disabled workers and common pensioners? And first of all it is the problem, concerning the free passage.

- Here are the most urgent situations?

- The most urgent situations are there, where the administration has got rid of privileges but money is still not paid off. In this connection I can say that there are a lot of regions, where the problem was solved well. For example there are regions that have given privilege tickets, which are equaled to the money paid.

- The situation is absurd: there are money but it isn’t paid off. Why do things like this happen?

- You know, I don’t want to approve or disapprove of regional administrations. As for me I would recommend to save the privileges in those regions, where the payments can’t yet be provided.

- Two things coincided in the beginning of the year: it is money for privileges, on the one hand and increase of the dwelling taxes. How people can combine these things?

- All privileges in connection with the dwelling taxes are saved for people included into the federal list. But it is clear that there are a huge number of common pensioners. That is why we are trying to solve the problem by the means of increasing the stock pension.

Interview with the chairman of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov

- What do you think, if it is the law that appeared to be so imperfect than it has been supposed to, or if it is the executives that failed?

- The law is good. We give real money to true and real people who have privileges. But to our regret, the executives as usual failed. If each of them had done what he was supposed to, all these privileged people would feel that they really got profits.

-The regional level is the most urgent now. How toughly do you control the regional administrations?

- At the 11th of January all deputies returned to Duma with a great number of questions, problems and suggestions that can be found in the regions. I can say that the situation is absolutely under control. Speaking about regions, they can either save the privileges, or change them for money.

The situation demands explanations. A citizen needn’t read the laws, but these laws have to be explained to him.

- Are you going to change the law taking into consideration new circumstances?

- The previous week was devoted to the analysis of the situation in the country. We will continue learning the mass point of view. We see that there are no complaints against the law. The complaints are against its execution. That is why any changes of the law itself are out of the question.

Copyright 20022018, Federal Public Health Institute The project is funded by WHO/CIDA Health Care Policy and Stewardship Programme in Russia Developed in co-operation with the EU funded Tacis "North West Health Replication Project"